Martin O'Neill's side impressed in their cup quarter-final clash at Everton at the weekend, holding the Toffees to a 1-1 draw, but failed to emulate that gritty display at Ewood Park as they were beaten 2-0.

Larsson is adamant the Wearsiders must get their Premier League campaign back on track, starting at home to QPR on Saturday.

He told the Sunderland Echo: "We can't just concentrate on the cup and we're not going to use that as an excuse whatsoever.

"We've got loads to play for in the league and we want to push on and finish as high as we can. We don't want to let the season fizzle out. The cup comes along when it comes along, until then we won't worry about it.

"The good thing is we've got a game in a couple of days again. We need to dust ourselves off and be ready for that and make sure we get the three points at home.

Not good enough

"We should be turning up for games like last night. You can never guarantee a scoreline, but we shouldn't perform like that.

"We know what we can do and we've done it plenty of times over the last few months.

"When you know that, sometimes you don't understand why things like this happen. You just have to hold your hands up and say we weren't good enough."

Larsson feels Junior Hoilett's opening goal for Rovers in the second half was they key to Sunderland's undoing.

"It was a really poor game of football overall, but at half-time we were still very much in it," added the Sweden international.

"The first goal was always going to be important. They got it and we probably only turned up for 10 or 15 minutes and should have scored a couple of goals. But if you only play 10 or 15 minutes, you aren't going to win any football matches.

"If we had turned it up by 10 per cent in the second half, we probably would have walked away with a few points. But we didn't, they scored a goal and that decided the game."